Traditionally, several indoor inspection tasks such as stock checking in warehouses or inspection of retail stores are done manually and hence are time-consuming. Also, manual inspection processes may not be efficient as they require the person to move across all the locations and physically inspect all the items stored at different levels/heights.
There exist several semi-automated inspection methods, which address some issues of the manual inspection process. According to one of the semi-automated inspection methods, a person has to move around the inspection area while taking multiple images of the inspection with an imaging device. Subsequently, the images are analyzed manually or using image analytics algorithms to detect items/objects in the inspection area. However, these semi-automated inspection methods have the disadvantage of inaccurate localization and often require an elaborate infrastructure setup for localization. Further, some of the automated inspection methods use robotic devices such as an automated ground vehicle, which may be programmed to autonomously traverse around the inspection area and capture multiple images of the inspection area. However, such methods have disadvantages that the objects stored at different level/heights cannot be imaged from the ground vehicle.
In view of the above limitations, present-day inspection methods make use of automated inspection devices that may be operated from various heights and configured to capture multiple images of the inspection area to perform the indoor inspection tasks. However, for large inspection areas, using a single automated inspection device may not be feasible due to limitation of battery life and computational capacity of the automated inspection device. Also, inspecting a large inspection area by a single inspection device may take a lot of time. Hence, it may be advantageous to use multiple automated inspection devices to concurrently inspect the inspection area. Accordingly, a mechanism for planning and coordinating concurrent navigation of the multiple automated inspection devices may be essential.
The information disclosed in this background of the disclosure section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.